THE BACK STORY: Templeton happy just the way he is

Opinion

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This article was published 31/01/2020 (2047 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s not the voice you’d expect to hear coming out of a tall, burly young man.

The scratchy soprano is in complete opposition to what one might think would be a baritone, or at least a stereotypically more masculine sound.

But 20-year-old Nolan Templeton is completely content in his own skin, and with his own voice. He has travelled a long road to get to where he is, and in fact is just grateful to be here at all.

Born two months premature, Templeton made his arrival on the very day his parents, Angeline and Scott, were scheduled to move from Calgary to Brandon. He spent four weeks in hospital before being able to come home, and he often needed oxygen to help him breathe due to his underdeveloped lungs.

His parents noticed that his voice, even when he cried, was very quiet, so when he was six months old, they requested a referral to an ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT, or otolaryngologist). A scope showed a number of polyps on his vocal cords, and they were removed when he was nine months old.

Over the next 15 months, he was back and forth to Winnipeg Children’s Hospital — sometimes as frequently as every two weeks — to have his rapidly returning polyps removed. Throughout his childhood, Templeton returned for followup exams that sometimes resulted in surgery — he has had more than 30 during his lifetime — and these procedures always involved overnight stays due to the potential life-threatening swelling of his airways.

The end result of all this trauma was permanent damage, and the scar tissue that developed following his many procedures has affected the muscles around his vocal cords, which themselves are so small they have trouble vibrating together enough to produce sound.

So how has he coped with being different, with the odd looks sometimes directed his way, and the inevitable barrage of questions?

Simply by being himself.

“Obviously, some people get a bit of a shock, because I am a bigger guy,” Templeton said. “But I’m not shy. And if people ask, I’m happy to tell what happened to me. It doesn’t bother me. I usually just say, ‘I had surgery in the past.’ And then I kind of deflect it by asking them how their day was.”

Templeton credits his parents for helping develop his self-confidence — he was always encouraged to speak for himself. They ensured that he ordered his own meals, fielded inquiries about his voice, and did all the usual childhood activities most kids do. He had play-dates with friends, took skating lessons, went to hockey and baseball camps, and lived a normal life.

Remarkably, he doesn’t recall ever being bullied. He has made a point of being nice to people, he said, and figures that might have headed off any potential mistreatment. And he has always had a positive outlook on what could have been a very negative situation.

“I was a pretty mature kid — I had to grow up kind of fast,” Templeton said. “I had to make sure I knew what I was about and why I talk the way I do. And I had to explain to other kids sometimes. And they all really showed lots of concern about it.

“I’ve played sports and stuff and I’ve had lots of different comments, but it’s more about like you know who you are and you know what you’re about and you just need to worry about yourself. It’s not what anyone else says.”

Templeton has had a number of different jobs during and since his high school days at Vincent Massey, all of them involving interaction with the public. He worked banquets at the Victoria Inn, at the vendor there for a bit, at Superstore, and since May of last year, at the 10th and Victoria Liquor Mart.

He’s now enrolled at Brandon University, studying criminology in the hopes of one day becoming an officer with the Brandon Police Service. He was inspired by his uncle, Const. Mike Templeton, who moved from BPS to the RCMP and was shot in the face in February 2002 after pulling over a vehicle near Oakville, about 20 kilometres east of Portage la Prairie. He’s now fully recovered and works for the Musical Ride in Ottawa.

“All through my life, although he wasn’t always close in proximity to us, I always looked up to him as a leader and as a person who has integrity,” Templeton said. “Because that’s one of the main things you need as a police officer. And you have to want to help people. So I think in that way, I can help people who are in a worse situation than I’m in. And also help keep people safe. Because in my eyes, that’s what a police officer’s job is — to keep people safe and to help the people who need it.”

Templeton knows he has been helped a lot for much of his life, and he wants to pay it forward. He has high praise for his family and for the medical system, which he credits with saving his life. His polyps resulted from a precancerous virus, and had they spread to lungs, it would likely have been, in his words, “game over.” And odd though it may seem, he thinks of his early illness and the resulting vocal deficiency as a good thing.

“It’s definitely been a blessing,” he said. “I wasn’t supposed to make it as far as I did, so I’ve learned to appreciate things a lot more. And learned to look at life differently than maybe someone who didn’t have the same experience.

“You need to be selfless. You need to put other people before yourself because there’s always someone who needs a helping hand, who needs support, or someone who’s in a worse situation.

“And I think everyone has a purpose, and I think my purpose was to be unique in my own way, and to kind of make people realize that it’s about the bigger picture. If it wasn’t for my parents, I wouldn’t be here. And if it wasn’t for the doctors that helped me when I was younger, I wouldn’t be here. So it’s more about the people you surround yourself with, and the people who are positive influences in your life, rather than you as a person. It’s about more than just about you.”

 

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